Another Time, Another Day
by Sunshine-M
Summary: Au, no ZA. Daryl ends up in the hospital and meets his doctor. Carol/Daryl all the way. Please read and review
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is an experiment. If you enjoy it, I may post more scenarios where Daryl and Carol meet sometimes in the ZA or without the ZA. Disclaimed: None of this is mine, I own nothing.

Daryl hated hospitals, and would have killed Merle if he was around, for having tossed him out of a car some time before (days?), after Daryl had been stabbed in the stomach in a fight. Of course, big brother was nowhere to be seen, and Daryl was playing the sleeping game in order to not have to answer the cops' questions. Who had stabbed him? Why?

He had gotten stabbed because he had been slow and had been entirely too trusting that Merle had his back. When the fight had broken out, over cards, Daryl not being part of the game, as he hated gambling, for some reason, one of the assholes Merle had been playing with had decided that Daryl must have been sending his brothers clues about the others' game.

Merle would have needed to pay him a fuckload of money, all cash and with non-sequential serial numbers before Daryl would have helped him. Gambling was for the weak, and cheating on top of it made you a sore and stupid loser. Their father had been one of those.

The cops were still around, he could feel them staring. He needed them gone. He needed to see what could be done, and how he was. All he knew right now was that he his stomach hurt like a bitch, and his nose was itching. The latter of those consideration was the worst to bear with.

Finally, he heard some noise he was familiar with, cops got a call from dispatch, and made sure with a nurse that they would be called when John Doe would wake up.

Forcing his features to remain as still as possible, he tried not to chuckle at the fact that he was a John Doe once again. Every time he got in trouble, he ended up a John Doe at the hospital, because his brother dearest always made sure he would drop him without identification papers, so that when Daryl would slip out of the hospital, they wouldn't have medical bills to pay. It meant changing hospitals and dispensaries each time, in order to not get recognized after a while, and when they had been driving here, it had felt like the longest drive ever, the pain too strong, and Daryl thought he had asked his brother to drop him somewhere closer and risk being recognized, because there was too much pain. Lord knew, or the Devil knew, that Daryl knew pain.

He had vague memories of getting tossed on the curb, his brother honking over and over again until the doctors had rushed out and gotten a hold of him. The memories got very blurry after the clear sound of the horn, and he had tidbits of recollections, involving more pains, people saying he was bleeding too much (duh) and someone jabbing a syringe in his arm. If it hadn't been filled with painkillers and hadn't sent him to La-La-Land, he would have punched the jabber. What was the doctors' creed again, do no harm? The jabbing had been painful enough to warrant a punch in the face.

Daryl wasn't sure how much time had elapsed since he had been tossed there. He knew he had been awake for half a day, but he couldn't say if he had just woken up after being stitched up or if he had spent a few days in a coma. It had happened in the past, and Daryl had discovered that there was nothing resting about being in a coma. You came out as drowsy and tired as you went in. Not a good deal.

"The cops are gone, Mr. Doe, I believe you can open your eyes and let me assess your injuries," he heard and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

The pain kept him in bed.

He slowly opened his eyes, and was met with a female doctor, who was sporting a sly smile, and who for some reason, he wanted to kiss senseless.

She had grey hair, but didn't look a day over 40. Then again, what did he know? He was hitting the big 4-0 later this year and he didn't know how people would describe him. What took his breath away were her eyes. She had warrior eyes, like his. She looked like she had seen too much and had to live with it every day. He knew the feeling. Oh, and her eyes were so clear you needed a moment to realize they were blue and not grey. Maybe they were grey? Nay. He may have a shitload of painkiller in his body, he still could tell colors apart.

She moved closer and came to sit next to him.

"So, Sleeping Beauty, want to tell me why I had to bring you back twice after I opened you up?"

He had been struck dumb, there were no other explanations. Or maybe there was something wrong with his brain. Had they done a neuro exam? Dixon brains were notoriously untrustworthy.

"I... died?" He asked finally, and fuck, his throat was sore.

She got up and went somewhere in the room. He wanted to ask her to come back and sit, his throat could wait, but she was back in an instant, with ice. She offered him a couple of pieces, slowly, and the contact of her warm hands against his face made him feel very grateful he didn't blush.

"Careful. We had to put you on respirator during the procedure, and we removed the tube when we had patched you up and you could breathe on your own. I'm guessing your throat must be sore. It will pass. It will be nasty in the meantime, but it will pass after a while."

"Who?"

Wow. He had never been a man of words, but he felt like he was bordering on brain injury territory. Except his brain seemed to work fine. It was the doctor who was stealing his words and left him clinging to her voice.

"My name is Doctor Peletier, trauma surgeon at Emory's hospital."

The fuck? Daryl thought, looking at her. No wonder it had felt so long getting there, his brainless brother had decided to drive him in A-fucking-Tlanta. It hadn't been like Daryl had been bleeding like a gutted pig...

"Do I keep on calling you John Doe?" She asked.

"What about Sleeping Beauty?" He sassed, and though it was a stupid comeback, he was glad his brain was back with the program.

"If you insist, I'll call you Sleeping Beauty. Though you should know, I don't think Sleeping Beauty snored as loud as you did," she said mischievously.

"I do not snore!" He exclaimed, outraged.

He saw the spark in her eyes, and he realized she had played him into revealing just how awake and functioning he was.

"Ha ha. Call me Daryl." He said, annoyed at his behavior.

"Daryl. Nice to meet you. Now that we've chit-chat, do you mind if I check your wounds?"

"Dying to get me naked, aren't you?" He said, while trying to help her remove the cover so that she could check.

A breeze of air around his dick made him realize that he was naked beneath the gown. Blood rushed through his veins, and he forced himself to look away. If she needed to open the gown, she would expose him, and while he might be a cocky little thing (nicest compliment his brother had ever paid him), he just didn't want to be looking at her with his junk out in the open. Hell, he was pretty sure he was stupid enough to get a boner, and he found himself hoping that there was not enough blood in him, and that nothing would happen when he would feel her hands on him.

If they had been anywhere else, and she had been about to check his junk, he would have hoped for a more ... romantic setting. The word had almost burnt his brain as he had allowed himself to think it. Romantic. Ugh. It reminded him of when he was eight and Merle had made him believe that girls didn't have cooties, but that they had this special power that made your dick fall off the moment they touched you. He had avoided girls' touch for a couple of years, and when one teacher of the female gender had touched him, he had jumped away and ran to the bathroom, making sure his dick was still on. That had been a bitch to explain to the teacher who thought she had hurt him. Thanks Merle.

He turned his head around slowly, when he realized his dick was not in the open, and Dr. Blue Eyes was examining her work. He saw that she had managed to push his gown in such a way that a piece of it was covering his cock.

She looked at him and saw that he was watching what she had done.

"Yeah, I thought this was more second-date discovery," she said jokingly. "You know, keep the mystery for a while longer."

She seemed to blush as if she regretted her quip.

"Chicks usually fight each other in order to be the one meeting... that part of me," he said, feeling extremely shy, which was not like him, or maybe it was him.

He was a chick's magnet, he knew it, it was the lone wolf thing, but he didn't care for them. He fucked them when he had an itch, but that was it. Dr. Blue Eyes was something else, she was a whole new world, in which he had no place. He silently thanked the asshole who had stabbed him. Sure, he had almost died from what he could tell, but if it meant meeting his Doctor, he would die and be resuscitated again.

"Shush," She said, but her smile didn't match the chastising words.

She had put gloves on, and checked the stitches. It didn't hurt, she was careful and her touch was light, yet he knew she knew what she was doing and what she was looking for.

She put his gown back in place and put back the cover in place.

"You want to know what we did?" She asked.

"I want your name."

"Peletier. Do I need to check you head?"

"Your first name," he groaned, and she seemed to think it through before saying:

"Carol. So you really don't care about what went down in the O.R?"

"Tell me Carol then."

She explained that he had been brought with three stab wounds, and that his bowel had been hit. In the O.R, she had fixed it, but he had lost so much blood that his body had given up twice, and she hadn't let him have his way and had brought him back. It did explain why he felt like shit.

"I waited until the cops were called away before I came to examine you," she said.

"You knew...?"

"That you were awake?"

She laughed and that was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

"In my experience, people who are really under and still recovering from the procedure do not discreetly use their morphine pump when nobody is watching."

"Hey, don't put it in my hand if you don't want me to use it!" He said, feeling like she had caught him with the hand in the proverbial cooking jar.

"I put it in your hand precisely because I thought you may want to use it. I had an inkling you were faking sleep, and I had one of the nurses put the button in your hand and speak out loud about it, to test my theory."

"Why didn't you just tell the cops on me?"

She looked thoughtful and he could tell she was carefully crafting whatever she would say next.

"One of the nurses... She's close to retiring. She told me that she was almost certain you were a patient she had seen when he was younger, after he had been beaten, and for whom life hadn't been kind. I checked you over when they brought you in, your back and..."

"You can always me check me out," he said, half-jokingly, nit sure he wanted to hear where this was going, as this was hitting way too close to home.

Who wanted to meet a woman, the first woman ever, and have them know right away that they had not been worthy of their parents' love?

"Anyway, I just thought that you had your reasons for pretending to be asleep, that we would discuss it once we were rid of the policemen."

He looked at her, at her profile, and he had this feeling in his chest that she was not saying many things, but that she could relate to some of the things she had noticed on him or about him. It made him mad, not because she knew about him, but because she seemed to know from experience what the things she had seen meant.

"I know what it's like to not want to talk to the cops," she said.

"You saw my back," he said, "how 'bout tit for tat?" He said.

He wasn't sure if he expected her to go along, but at least it made him feel like he was gaining back control.

"Tit for tat. Tit for tat," she repeated, looking over his head at the wall.

He didn't want to make her uneasy and was looking for something to change the subject.

"I became a trauma surgeon because I was a patient for a couple of them when I was 19 and married an asshole. Asshole died, and I went to med school. Is that tit enough for tat?"

He didn't know what to say, since she had been so candid, almost too candid for him to handle.

He saw that she was still waiting for him to react. He nodded.

She got up, and he couldn't help but drink in her silhouette. She looked so frail, but a trauma surgeon...

"You should see me crack open chests with my bare hands," She joked, and he wondered if she could read his mind.

She pretended to crack open an invisible chest with her hands like she was the Hulk, and he laughed.

He stopped right away and used the morphine pump like a mad man. It hurt like a bitch.

"Sorry," she apologized.

"No need."

"Well, I've got other patients to see," she said.

"Liar."

He had no idea why he had said it, but he knew she had been lying. She just wanted to give him some space, and maybe get some for herself.

"Will you come back?" He asked.

"Yes. Will you still be pretending to be asleep?" She asked.

He sighed. If she was coming back, he wouldn't be able to play dead, now, would he?

"Damn you Carol," He said.

She smiled and winked at him.

She left.

Damn her. It looked like he would be paying medical bills in the future. He would worry about that later, and he went to sleep, dreaming of blue eyes, and smile that made him feel like he had won the lottery.


	2. Chapter 2

When he woke up later, Daryl heard whispers and wondered where he was before it all came back to him.

"You're awake!" A cheery person exclaimed, and suddenly a brunette wearing a blouse was in his face, literally, checking his pupils.

The doctor made a few more tests, as he struggled to say something.

"Water!" The brunette exclaimed.

She offered him a glass with a straw and he took a few gulps feeling like he needed more, always more.

"Not too much," the brunette said when she took the straw away. "We don't want to overwhelm your system."

"You're overwhelming my system," he muttered.

He supposed she was pretty looking, but way too chipper for him. He found his morphine pump and used it aggressively.

"Sorry, I'm Doctor Maggie Greene, Doctor Peletier's resident, and this is one of our lawyer Andrea Harrison."

"What?" Daryl tried to ask, but the pain was slowly diminishing, making it hard for him to take everything in.

He had not seen the blonde woman for example, as he had dealt with his pain.

"We're filing a request for you to get your medical bills taken in charge by the Blake foundation," Doctor Greene said.

"Wait a minute…"

"You're so unlike your brother, it's amazing," Andrea said. "Maggie, why don't you go get him some ice cubes or something while I tell him about the Blake foundation?"

The doctor looked at them both then seemed to decide that Andrea was right.

"Hello Mr. Dixon," the blonde said when the doctor had dashed. "My name is Andrea Harrison, as you were told, and I'm one of the attorneys working for the hospital."

"How do you know my name?" He asked.

He had only told Carol his first name.

"I know your brother, much to my misfortune. He was operated on once here, and he dashed before he could pay the bills. Since I had taken some time to talk to him and possibly get his identity and more info to make him a Blake candidate, when he ran, it pissed me off, and I hired a detective to find him again."

"You know Merle?"

"Yes. Didn't he get a beating about 8 months ago? That was my doing. The PI I got, he had a mission. To make your brother regret ever calling me "sugar tits"."

Daryl wanted to laugh but the pain was too present in his being.

"When he looked for Merle, he brought me back pictures, including one where you were featured, and that's how I know who you are. Dr. Peletier asked me to see if you could one for the Blake …."

"What's that?"

"It's a foundation. Philip Blake runs it. He set a fund so that he will cover the medical bills of certain patients meeting certain criteria. When I identified you by sight, and told the cops who you were, Dr. Peletier was not happy. She told me she could tell you were not okay talking with the cops and she wanted to hear your reason first, but I messed up with that plan. By identifying you, I allowed the hospital to start billing you, and we both agreed that making a request to the Blake foundation to cover your bills would be appropriate, to fix any damage I may have done by running my mouth. I was just so pissed off still at your brother, I let the anger overcome me."

"I am no charity case."

"No one said you would be. Carol asked me to do this not for charity reason or anything, but because the hospital told her how much they would be charging you for her experimentation and she feels it's completely unfair for you to be paying for something she did."

"Well she saved my life." Daryl said, still fuzzy, but hanging to Carol's name, and the memory he had of her.

"Indeed. You came in such a state, there was no time to ask you if you would be okay with Dr. Peletier trying something new on you, and she feels terrible. Luckily, for you, and her conscience, Philip Blake is extremely partial to her work and her patients. Seriously, it's borderline obscene sometimes. For some patient, I have to fill pounds and pounds of paper with proofs and character letters and more, but when it's a Peletier patient, Blake pulls out his checkbook, metaphorically, because it's her and she saved his daughter years ago. If I ask you a few questions, will you help me finish this request?"

"I don't want no charity."

"Believe me, there's no point trying to escape it. Blake is on the board of the hospital. When he'll hear about the big wigs charging a Peletier experimentation extra, he will insist on paying the bills. To be honest, it's not even about you. He couldn't care less about who you are and what you do, if you have kids or if you've been to jail, he just wants Dr. Carol Peletier to be free to experiment and cure people. If he wasn't happily married, it would be creepy. It is a little creepy still to be honest. The point is, when Blake hears that one of Carol's patients may need help with bills or may be charged extra, he just runs like superman with his checkbook. He thinks every bills he pays for is a way to thank our good doctor for what she did when he needed her to make a miracle happen and save his daughter."

Daryl winced, as the guy seemed like a basket case to him.

"I know," Andrea says. "But see the bright side, you give me a couple of information I'm needing, you don't have bills to pay, he will even pay for your recovery time, and the board will have to give more leeway to Dr. Peletier to experiment since she's got a benefactor backing her up. In a way, it's like you're helping her."

"That's fucked up."

"Amen. Now tell me your birthdate."

Andrea buggered him some more as he was hesitant, but he had to admit she presented a pretty solid case. Blake hadn't met any patient of Peletier's in years, he just wanted to make her life easier. The guy had a serious scientific crush on her. Daryl could have been rich beyond his imagination, Blake still would have insisted on paying his bills to show his undivided trust in Dr. Peletier's work.

So Daryl gave his personal details, and Andrea wrote it down on a simple sheet of paper. She explained again that for any other doctor's patient, there would be forms needed, but when it came to Dr. Peletier, Blake never needed convincing. Andrea even told him about a time when she had submitted a request to cover bills for a patient on a dirt napkin and Blake had agreed without a second glance.

"Go back to sleep if you want," Andrea said as she got ready to leave the room. "Dr. Greene will be back in a couple of hours to check on you and man is she energetic. When I look at her, I feel drained."

He had to agree but then again he did have a stomach injury. He went back to sleep.

He woke up later, and this time there was nothing but the almost muted sound of the machines around him, and a pen scribbling down something.

He turned his head and his heart jumped in his chest. Carol was there, on a chair, doing some paperwork. He was certain she had an office, and a dozen other rooms she could have used, but for some reason, she was in his room.

"You're awake!" She whispered when she spotted him. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to wake you."

He wanted to ask her what she was doing here, and how she was doing; He wanted to tell her about Merle getting his ass beaten for calling a girl sugar tits. Most importantly, he just wanted to hear her speak again.

"Didn't wake me," he finally said.

"Can I examine you?" She asked.

He nodded, and even though the gestures were all clinical and professional, he liked the feeling of her skin against his.

"You're getting better, that's good. I'll let my resident follow the rest of your recovery."

"You won't come anymore?"

"I will, if you will have me. I just feel like…."

She laughed and shook her head before speaking again.

"The next question that will need to be asked in the morning will be about your bowel movement, and I just feel like maybe we should keep the mystery on this, don't you think?"

He snorted. Talking shit with her was not on his calendar.

"But you're a doc, you can't be embarrassed by those questions," he said.

"Maybe for a moment I want to pretend I'm a doc, but I'm not your doc, and I don't need to know about your bowel movement, the way a woman who likes a guy doesn't necessarily need to enquire about those things?" she said with a naughty smile.

"Lips are sealed on that topic," he said, feeling warm and happy.

Sure, there were machines, tubes, gowns and blouses, but what Carol was offering was for them to simply be a man and a woman. He was no fool, no ma'am, he would not turn his nose on this idea and the possibility it carried.

Doctors and patients couldn't flirt, but men and women…

She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Let's just be Daryl and Carol. Mags, that's Doctor Greene, can take over the surgical follow up."

"Is she always so perky?" He found himself asking.

"She could sustain the electricity of the whole town with her own energy for a month any day of the week," she said.

"Ugh, shiny people…"

"They're the worst. But sometimes they're not. She believes I'm the Trauma Goddess, so cut her some slack."

"I believe that too," he said smoothly.

She smiled again, and went back to working on her files. He went back to dozing off. This doctor had not chosen his room at random when looking for a place to do her work.

She was back the next night, and the one after that. They started talking. He gave the police a vague statement which didn't allow anyone to be caught, and got confirmation he was now a recipient of the Blake foundation.

When he got out of the hospital, he had her number, and thanks to Philip Blake, money to take her out. She insisted on waiting a couple of days for their date, but she made the trip all the way to his place to check on her favorite "non-patient" during that time.

Pretty soon, the date was forgotten, unless you counted eating pizza in his kitchen in nothing but his underwear for him and his shirt for her as such.

Hell, Daryl thought, he may actually have to thank his stupid brother for getting him gutted. He looked at Carol's cute face as she told an anecdote about a kid she had cured, and he thought to himself that it was a small price to pay, compared to the gift his brother had unknowingly given him.

Daryl kissed her nose, and she caressed his cheek. All thoughts of Merle were gone of course minutes later when they got back in bed, in each other's arms, kissing, biting licking, simply loving one another.


End file.
